Men in Walmart Smocks Steal $300,000 in Cash

“Police are hunting for some big time thieves this morning in Philadelphia. Two armed men robbed a Northeast Philadelphia Wal-Mart Sunday morning. It happened shortly after 2 a.m. at the store on Roosevelt Boulevard. The suspects were wearing Walmart smocks. They made their way into the store, forced a manager into a safe and duct taped another employee before fleeing with about $300,000 in cash. No one was injured.”

Wal-Mart stores are huge and typically have a ton of cash at the end of the day. That is why they have big strong safes to keep the cash in until an armored transport service can come and pick up the cash. Any big box retailer is going to end up with a ton of cash at the end of the business day unless they are about to go out of business.

Ah, the things you learn as a retail monkey that was forced to close at Circuit City many nights in a row.

re: the cash – Wal-mart has become a heavyweight in financial services – check cashing in particular. They’ve got to have a bunch of cash on hand for just such operations. They’re looking to get Federal Deposit insurance and a banking charter, so you may be seeing a Bank Wal-Mart popping up in a store near you. Joy.

Back when I was 20 and worked as an assistant manager at a busy CVS, we ended up with $50,000 cash one day.

We didn’t use an armored car service, so lucky me got to be the guy stuck with taking the deposit to the bank in his pathetic little car that was barely reliable enough to cross the parking lot. And stupid me, I decided to drive the back way in order to minimize the number of stoplights I’d hit.

Sure enough, my car broke down on the backroad I was on. I didn’t have a cellphone, only a beeper, so the best I could do was hope someone with a phone would come by and let me make a call. I couldn’t leave the $50,000 in the car to go find a phone, but neither could I carry the money with me, especially as it felt like $25,000 of it was coins. Man, those bags were heavy.

A very quiet, anxious hour passed. I would have to be on the one road in town which got almost no traffic, wouldn’t I? One car went by, but I couldn’t get them to stop for me. Meanwhile my beeper started going off every few minutes, then every minute. First it was the bank, which was expecting me, then my boss, CVS corporate, and several numbers I didn’t recognize.

By this time I figured I was probably going to end up the obbject of a huge manhunt, as CVS would suspect I’d run off with the money and was headed for the border.

Another hour passed before cops were surrounding my car and ordering me out at gunpoint.

Fortunately my boss and the district manager showed up as I was about to dragged off to jail, and I was able to clear things up with them and keep my freedom. My boss ended up in pretty big trouble with corporate, though, for sending me off by myself with that much money. He should have sought permission to order an armored car, or at least should have come with me and/or called the cops to ask for an escort to the bank.

Anyway, one good thing did come from the ordeal: I never got stuck with deposit duty again.

My friends and I actually witnessed a robbery taking place at the Wal-Mart in Norwalk, CT from their third floor balcony (which looked out over the Wal-Mart loading dock.) Two guys were running out the fire exit, alarm blaring, carrying what looked like electronics boxes and proceeded to jump into a waiting SUV and peel out of the parking lot. We called the police, then, after 20 minutes of no one at Wal-Mart responding to the alarm which was still going off, called Wal-Mart. They refused to believe they were robbed and hung up on us. The guys were eventually caught, but only because they had the genius idea to hit Costco too – and THOSE employees were actually paying attention.

An inside job? Maybe yes, maybe no. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two bought their smocks on an Ebay auction, then walked right in, unnoticed, amongst the other associates. With the revolving door of associates being hired, fired, or whatever; who would know if a new face is actually an employee or a very bold robber?

When I counted down my drawer from a four hour shift, I had nearly a thousand dollars each time (not counting credit card transactions, which I never really got to see,) and that was just in bumblefuck, Indiana . . . which is exactly why I had to work at Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart that was robbed, by the way, is a hellhole. Even for a Wal-Mart, it’s bad. My room mates and I went there once to get some grilling tongs or something like that. No matter how far across the country I go, Wal-Mart is always RIGHT THERE.